Grave
by walkswithwheels
Summary: "As his vision blurred, Isaac remembered." One-shot. Spoilers for the last ending of the game!


**Welcome to yet another one-shot and my very first fan fiction in the Binding of Issac fandom!**

 **As stated in the summary, this fanfic contains major spoilers for the final ending of the game (meaning the last ending obtained in Afterbirth+). If you do not wish to be spoiled, then turn back.**

 **As a warning, Binding of Isaac is a tragic and morbid game, so this fanfic is a sad one. It's also worth noting that this one-shot deals with a character's death. If you find either of these things distressing, then you might want to skip reading this fic.**

 **See the author's notes for more details, and I do not own Binding of Isaac.**

* * *

 **Grave**

Miles of darkness stretched out in front of him. The only thing he could feel was a floor as hard as stone.

Vaguely, he could make out walls enclosing him within his prison. He originally guessed the walls and floor were gray, but now he wasn't too sure anymore.

There wasn't a sound, save for his own labored breathing.

His only other companions were the watery tears that stained his face. He thought he cried them out long ago, but somehow but they kept coming. At first, he flinched at the sticky feeling they created, but he'd long since grown numb.

He should have been freezing. He hadn't had proper clothing in goodness knows how long. In the beginning, he _had_ shivered, crawling into this pitch black box.

Yet now, cold meant nothing as he lay curled up within this basement chest.

But that didn't stop his body from reacting anyway.

His vision spun, like a toy out of control. A piercing headache slammed into him like a locomotive. Try as he might, there was no way of focusing on the area in front of him.

Yet some things couldn't be more vivid.

As his vision blurred, Isaac remembered.

 _He had been smiling, genuinely smiling._

 _What had he been doing? Was he playing with his toys? His cat?_

 _Oh, he'd been drawing._

 _Isaac remembered his pencil danced as he drew. The noise of graphite against paper was music to his ears._

 _But what was he drawing that day?_

 _A dog? A duck?_

 _No._

 _It was a house. His house._

 _Their house._

 _The house that he and his family had lived in before… Everything._

 _Yes, everything that went wrong._

 _It was when Isaac was drawing that house that he heard the first sign of trouble._

 _The screams and howls of his parents pierced his ears. Isaac could barely make out what they were saying, but it couldn't have been good. Upstairs, he heard glass breaking._

 _Was anyone hurt?_

 _Should he go check?_

 _No, it was too dangerous. And scary. Mom and Dad were like completely different people after they fought upstairs. It was best to stay away._

 _But what if they were fighting… because of him?_

 _No, that couldn't be. If he did something wrong, one of them would tell him. And of course he would fix it._

 _Yes, it was best just to wait._

 _Isaac carefully placed his drawing and pencil on a table._

 _The paper beheld a simple picture, consisting of a tiny house and tree._

 _Giant, capitalized, bolded letters shouted a message written above the picture._

 _We lived here._

 _As Isaac turned and his parents' quarrels filled his ears, he doubted that was true._

Isaac's vision swam, like the tears that flowed freely down his face.

The tears and the breathing were joined by the pounding of his heart. Isaac didn't know a bullet's speed, but he was sure his booming heart moved faster.

The headache persisted, yet Isaac still felt nothing.

Instead, more memories flashed before his eyes.

 _Isaac had peeked into the living room that day. He wanted to ask his mother about… something._

 _Isaac recalled that his mother would be in the living room, watching her strange shows about God._

 _So into the living room he'd tiptoed._

 _Yet he wasn't greeted by the television blaring._

 _Instead, the sound of his mother's deafening, howling sobs reached his ears._

 _Isaac's request was all but forgotten as he learned one thing that day._

 _His father had left them._

 _There must've been fighting about him the day he drew the house. There was just no other reason._

 _Which meant everything was his fault._

 _That drawing… Where had he put it…?_

 _Maybe it was better he didn't remember. Its message didn't mean anything now._

Swimming became drowning. Drowning in the flood of tears he'd created.

Issac couldn't see much of anything now, as blackness obscured his vision. His heart thudded so loud and fast that he thought it was running some sort of race. Isaac's harsh breathing quickened, not to be outdone.

The present slowly slipped away, yet Isaac could still think back.

 _Fire roared in his ears as Isaac held up the remains of a charred photo. It looked like it was about join the many other photos tossed carelessly into a chest._

 _Yet Isaac had managed to save it, broken though it was._

 _Why did he save the photo that day?_

 _It was just like all the others that were being burned._

 _Somehow, he couldn't resist the urge to look at it._

 _Three people beamed back at him._

 _The first two Isaac recognized as himself and his mother._

 _Yet the third person in the picture was mostly missing, burned away by the wrathful flames._

 _Isaac shuddered._

 _Even though there wasn't much left in the picture, he could recognize his father too._

 _Could he have done something different?_

 _Could he have stopped his parents from fighting so much?_

 _Could he have made his mother happy, so his father wouldn't have to leave forever?_

 _Yes._

 _He should have done something different._

 _He should have stopped his parents from all their horrid fighting._

 _He should have made his mother happy, and then his father wouldn't have had to leave._

 _But he hadn't done anything._

 _And now his father was gone, leaving his mother in constant sorrow._

 _And it was all Isaac's fault._

Isaac could feel his breathing slow, and his heartbeat continued to sprint its race. He didn't think there was anything left in him, but his tears would not stop their march.

The present world was fading and darkness completely overtook Isaac's vision.

Yet he still had one last part of the past to cling to.

 _A gallery of pictures the lined the walls. The first, Isaac's family happy and whole. The little house and tree he had drawn hung below it. The drawing below that one showcased Isaac with his cat. The love for the animal couldn't be more pronounced, as the drawing contained a heart at the top. Isaac and the cat both held joyful smiles, with the drawing depicting them frolicking together._

 _And his father…_

 _Isaac's father…_

 _He may have left, but the drawings made sure he was still seen. And there he was, playing tag with a young Isaac. Like the cat, Isaac and his father beamed as they played._

 _The drawings depicted a time of innocence._

 _But there was a moment when the innocence is lost forever._

 _And that was when Isaac's thoughts turned down different paths._

 _His drawings followed._

 _One showed a time similar to the day he'd seen his mother cry. Like that time, Isaac had peeked into the living room._

 _He didn't remember why he decided to go there, but he would never forget the sight of his parents fighting. The screams again pierced his ears, but this time, it was as though they never stopped._

 _It must not have, because then Isaac's father left._

 _Isaac remembered crawling into the toy chest, looking for something to ease his pain. He'd suddenly remembered his old hobby of playing dress-up, and dug for whatever he could find. Isaac finally came out with a small wig, and promptly put it on._

 _For the first time in a while, he smiled._

 _Perhaps he could make things right by being someone else._

 _And so the drawing depicted that day, and for a while, Isaac's plan seemed to work._

 _Isaac and his mother now lived alone, but they grinned ear to ear in the photograph on the wall._

 _Despite his father leaving, the situation remained cheerful._

 _Until…_

 _Until…_

 _Isaac realized one day that his mother could hurt him._

 _He wasn't entirely sure what led to the change._

 _Only that one day his mother's smile twisted with rage._

 _And Isaac's father wasn't around._

 _So it must've been his fault._

 _The drawing portrayed his mother's ire, but all Isaac could think of that day was himself._

 _He hadn't watched much of his mother's shows. However, Isaac knew that there was a devil in the shows, and that the devil was evil._

 _Making his parents fight… causing his father to leave… Provoking his mother's ire… And doing nothing to stop any of that…_

 _There was no way he couldn't be evil._

 _Therefore, he was the devil._

 _There was no clearer depiction of that devil than the shadowy figure in the next drawing. With its pitch-black wings and glowing red eyes, it glared down at the rest of the gallery._

 _This creature in the drawing was almost as unsettling as the words scrawled on the walls. Phrases such as "I'm bad!" And "I'm the devil!" littered the place. The phrases screamed their message with large black and red letters. Ominously, they covered almost the entire area._

 _In the center of it all, a single drawing of a pentagram._

 _And at the end of the gallery, the logical conclusion._

 _Isaac knew he was the devil from his mother's shows._

 _And the devil would destroy his mother._

Isaac closed his eyes. The world faded completely.

The next time someone approached the chest, only bones remained.

As the chest was opened, sunlight streamed through.

The dazzling sunlight lit up the bones, announcing Isaac's fate to the world.

Outside, a ragged missing poster wore his face. The poster blew in the wind, before finally being torn from the tree it was nailed to.

Of course, there was no need for that anymore.

For Isaac had entered a place where no one could find him.

Now he roamed around, shadows at his back. Gray, hilly, landscape seemed to stretch on forever. Trees devoid of their leaves could be seen everywhere he looked. An ashen sky presided over everything.

Yet he continued walking.

Isaac didn't know exactly where he was, but he knew he'd left his grave.

* * *

 **Author's notes:**

 **\- I've always been morbidly fascinated with this ending, so I decided to novelize it. This ending has a few interpretations. These are the ones I went with:**

 **-In the game, the player (mostly) plays Isaac dressed up in different costumes. There is no explanation in the game for why he dresses up, but I thought would make sense for him to enjoy dressing up and do it as a hobby.**

 **-One theory is that Isaac believes his parents were fighting about him, and feels guilty when they break up. I went with this interpretation for his character.**

 **-The idea that the photographs were burned in the fire comes from the fact that when the ending plays, there is the sound of fire burning as Isaac holds the photograph.**

 **-It's not explicitly stated who opens the chest for the final time. Therefore, I deliberately left it ambiguous. It is also not stated where Isaac ends up after he dies, so this story leaves that ambiguous too.**

 **-Isaac's drawings and what was found in the chest at the end is a bit more graphic in the ending cutscene. I decided to avoid describing the graphic parts.**

 **-Finally, the name of this fanfic comes from a song that plays only during the final ending. Its name is in Latin and it translates to "tomb" or "grave".**


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